“In clear, conversational prose, Stephen Burt unties knotty contemporary poetry in Close Calls With Nonsense: Reading New Poetry, suggesting ways to read poems about ‘what matters in life.’ Burt makes you want to run out to a bookstore to get in on the excitement he conveys throughout this book.”

“In poems that are personal in their distrust of constructions of gendered self, dazzling in their speed of association, and masterful in their orchestration of an insistently ebullient music, Stephen Burt pulls the cork from a new century. Burt’s spicy, heuristic mix of high-literary and sub-pop culture requires a new reader. My dear, it is you. “

Stephen Burt and David Mikics

“Burt and Mikics have gathered together and composed a marvelous book. Both of them give us profound commentaries on particular sonnets and on the genre. I know of no other recent book that so steadily illuminates the riches it invokes.”